54th San Francisco International Film Festival 21 April - 5 May 2011

AWARDS/

GOLDEN GATE AWARDS

Better This World is the 2011 recipient of the Golden Gate Awards for Best Documentary Feature and for Best Bay Area Documentary Feature.

The Golden Gate Awards were established to augment the San Francisco International Film Festival’s tradition of recognizing and promoting excellence in independent and world cinema. For more than five decades, the competition has introduced Bay Area audiences to illustrious filmmakers who have transformed the medium with their award-winning documentary and narrative features and animated, narrative, documentary, experimental and youth-produced short films.

The Golden Gate Awards are one of many ways in which the San Francisco Film Society fulfills an essential Festival function: to increase attention and resources given to independent filmmakers, and to support the development of international cinema. This year, there will be close to $100,000 awarded in cash prizes, with $75,000 for feature-length documentary and narrative works and $18,500 earmarked specifically for Bay Area filmmakers.

Selected from a wide array of entries, these films truly represent the best of the international filmmaking community. Some past recipients of the Golden Gate Award for feature film include Lixin Fan (Last Train Home), Pedro González-Rubio (Alamar) and Anders Østergaard (Burma VJ), while local luminaries such as Marlon Riggs, Sam Green and Lourdes Portillo have been awarded for their cinematic achievements.

The prestige of the Golden Gate Awards is distinguished in large part due to the participation and expertise of the members of our vital and dedicated Bay Area film and video community. Each year, filmmakers, journalists, exhibitors, curators and academics devote hours of their valuable time to screen hundreds of entries. These individuals evaluate each submission and recommend films for Golden Gate Award competition. International jurors view these works at the Festival and bestow Golden Gate Awards upon narrative and documentary features and short films.

Since 1957, the Golden Gate Awards have recognized and honored filmmakers of the highest caliber, and we are especially proud of this year’s world-class films in competition.

2011 GOLDEN GATE AWARDS OFFICIAL SELECTIONS

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Better This World (Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Best Bay Area Documentary Feature)
Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway, USA

DAN KRAUSS
Dan Krauss is an Academy Award– and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker whose work has won awards from the Tribeca Film Festival, IDA and the San Francisco International Film Festival. HBO acquired his first film, The Death of Kevin Carter. He was director of photography for the Academy Award–nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America and Life 2.0 (SFIFF 2010).

MIKE MAGGIORE
Mike Maggiore, with director Karen Cooper, programs the premieres for New York’s Film Forum. He has served on the committees of Film Independent’s Truer than Fiction Award and the Sundance Documentary Fund. Previously he was assistant director of the film and video department of Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and publicity manager for the Museum of the Moving Image.

ESTHER ROBINSON
Esther Robinson is an award-winning filmmaker/producer whose critically acclaimed directorial debut, A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory, took top prizes at the Berlin, Tribeca and Chicago film festivals and is available domestically on the Sundance Channel, Netflix and iTunes. Other producing projects include The Canal Street Madam, Home Page and the 1999 digital satellite release of The Last Broadcast.

SHORTS JURY

ANDY GILLET
Andy Gillet is a stage and screen actor. His first film was Nouvelle Chance. He subsequently appeared in Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (SFIFF 2008), Min Kyu-dong's Antique and Philippe Terrier Hermann’s The Rift. Gillet recently appeared as the Marquis de St. Loup in an adaptation of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, directed by Nina Companez.

MAX GOLDBERG
Max Goldberg is a film critic for San Francisco Bay Guardian, where he writes primarily about alternative cinemas. His work also appears in Cinema Scope, SF360.org, MUBI Notebook and on his blog, Text of Light. He received his master's degree in Cinema Studies from San Francisco State University.

KIM YUTANI
Kim Yutani is a film programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. She is also the director of programming for Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and oversees Fusion: The Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival and the Outfest Screenwriting Lab. She has served on juries at the Toronto and Berlin international film festivals and the Palm Springs International ShortFest.